Two men reach for something holy. One dies. One is healed. The difference is not the sincerity of their actions, nor the worthiness of the one reaching, but the object toward which the hand is extended. This article sets Uzzah’s presumptuous grasp at the Ark against the hemorrhaging woman’s desperate touch of Christ’s hem, and finds in the contrast the whole logic of the gospel: that the holiness of God, which once destroyed the sinner who drew near without a mediator, now heals all who come to Christ in faith.
